If you happen to be rich, really like food or you don’t mind shelling out a small fortune for a single meal, I’ve found the perfect restaurant for you. Jet-setting gastronomes bored with their local fare who are flushed with cash and unwilling to settle for anything less than at least one Michelin star (that’s slumming for world-class epicures) can now take heart. “Sublimotion” is here — and it’ll only cost you $2,000 to take part in one of the most incredible dining experiences of your life.
For those of you who think $2,000 is a bit much to hand over for a single meal, I’ll try and sell the concept a little further. Your hard-earned paycheck — or perhaps your family inheritance or trust fund money — will buy you more than the mere chance to delight in the planet’s most expensive tasting menu. It will buy you a way of life.
Sure, Sublimotion, located in the Hard Rock Hotel on the Spanish island of Ibiza, will seduce your senses of taste and smell with its 20-course meal, served to only 12 guests at a time. And yes, the ridiculously high prices and secluded setting should keep away the Olive Garden and P.F. Chang riffraff in search of exotic culinary thrills who might spoil the feasting ambiance.
Yet there’s more to this high-end eatery.
One of the most obvious pluses for the dinning elite who get to eat at this very exclusive locale is the chance to experience chef Paco Roncero’s (two Michelin stars to his name) creations while immersed in a “radically different display of gastronomy … where culinary art and technological innovation come together to create a complete and unprecedented emotional experience.” This means, apparently, some really cool lighting and arty projections on the tables and the walls.
Now some of you still might be skeptical about wasting so much money on a lavish restaurant, especially when the gap between the rich and the poor is widening in the West, and the middle class is finding it harder to pay for basic services like childcare, education and food.
But really, what does a measly $2,000 buy these days? Let’s see, you can buy a Piaggio motor scooter, purchase groceries for an American family of four for about two months, clothe and feed a family in Malawi for more than three years, buy 64,200 nutrition packets for infants with malnutrition, take home three to five iPads (depending on the model) or buy yourself 80 dinners at P.F. Chang’s China Bistro.
While I’m not against splurging on a great meal now and then, it’s interesting to see how far $2,000 can go in the modern world. If you live in a costly city like London or Tokyo, that’s not very fall at all — but for folks in Afghanistan, and even economically disadvantaged communities in the United States, some extra cash in hand can be a real blessing.
Guilt is a powerful tool, which often motivates people of means to give some of their money away, in order to assuage their aforementioned guilt. Dropping a ton of cash on a swanky new Spanish joint isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but neither is it typical. Taking stock of the real value of money from time to time is an important exercise — especially in a world where food isn’t always readily available, or cheap.
